Recently, a vehicle such as an automobile includes a so-called hybrid vehicle provided with both an internal-combustion engine (engine) which burns fuel and a motor (motor generator) driven by electric power as power sources. Some of such vehicles provided with a plurality of power sources are provided with a control device which controls switching among travel by using the engine as the power source, travel by using the motor generator as the power source, and travel by using both the engine and the motor generator as the power sources. For example, Patent Literature 1 discloses a control device of a hybrid vehicle including an engine and a motor generator as drive sources and a drive wheel in a drive system provided with a battery, information obtaining means, driving schedule setting means, and drive controlling means. When it is not possible to run through a low-load section by travel control in an electric vehicle mode with a charge amount of a battery, the drive controlling means of the control device performs engine intermittent travel control in which a travel power generating mode and an electric vehicle mode are repeated in addition to the travel control in the electric vehicle mode in the low-load section.
Patent Literature 2 discloses a control device of a vehicle including a plurality of travel modes (drive modes). The control device includes means for detecting travel information of the vehicle affected by preference of a driver, storage means for storing the travel information for each category classified at least based on road information, means for updating the detected travel information to store in the storage means, means for searching a travel route to a destination, means for specifying the road information in the searched travel route, means for specifying the category corresponding to the searched travel route, means for reading the travel information in the specified category from the storage means, predicting means for predicting energy balance in the searched travel route based on the read travel information, setting means for setting a travel mode in the searched travel route based on the predicted energy balance, and means for controlling the vehicle so as to travel in the set travel mode.